


Fibonacci Numbers and Other Constants

by oldamongdreams



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, F/M, Johnlock is subtle but there, Molly is much stronger than she gets credit for, OCD, Panic Attacks, Written in Second Person because that's what the words wanted, minor allusions to DubCon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldamongdreams/pseuds/oldamongdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your life is measured in little rituals, things that wouldn’t matter to anyone else. You don’t worry about germs, not in your line of work. It was practically the only thing that you didn’t worry about, these days. </p><p>Check the lights, off, on, off again, check the doors three times, head to work. Take the same route you always do, even if it means arriving five minutes later than you might have otherwise, just to avoid the crowding press of humanity around you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fibonacci Numbers and Other Constants

One, two, three steps from your bed to the wall.

Turn, face the other direction, left finger to right palm.

One, two, three.

Right finger to left palm.

Repeat.

Your life is measured in little rituals, things that wouldn’t matter to anyone else. You don’t worry about germs, not in your line of work. That's practically the only thing that you didn’t worry about, these days.

Check the lights, off, on, off again, check the doors three times, head to work. Take the same route you always do, even if it means arriving five minutes later than you might have otherwise, just to avoid the crowding press of humanity around you.

You’ve always preferred the company of corpses to that of the living, not that you’d ever admit it out loud.

People are loud and obnoxious and they’re always touching you, brushing up against you in a way that threatens to send you spiralling into a panic attack that will last the rest of the day.

The morgue is quiet and orderly. It’s sterile, and sometime in the last few years it began to feel like home. You rarely have visitors, with the exception of the other morgue attendant at the end of your shift and Sherlock and occasionally the police.

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It’s April the first time you meet Sherlock Holmes. You’re on a new medication that you think is working, and reciting the names of the bones in the hand and arm as you examine the corpse in front of you. He spirals in like a hurricane, all swishing black coat and cutting deductions, and takes over a corner of the morgue like it’s his right.

He deduces your life with one glace—twenty six, lives alone, bad breakup a few months ago, owns a cat, severe anxiety disorder—and asks you if he’s missed anything. You tell him he didn’t, and recite the Fibonacci numbers in your mind to try and restore order. If he can’t figure this out on his own, you aren’t going to tell him.

It’s much later the same night when you lock the door behind you and head home, turning on every light in the house before you sit on the sofa and take a deep breath. For all his faults, Sherlock Holmes is a great man. He solves crime, he didn’t attempt to touch you, and he doesn’t seem to be held to the same standards that constrain society. He laid bare your weaknesses, but didn’t tease you about them.

The panic attack you’ve been expecting all day never comes, and it’s then that you realize you might just be over your head when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. What’s more, you don’t know what will stop the fluttering in your chest, beating in perfect 7/3 time.

You know that half of you only fancies him because you know it will never happen, and the other half of you fancies him because, despite all of his inconsiderate rudeness, he doesn’t pry.

It’s nearly two months later when you meet Lestrade. He follows Sherlock into the morgue, shouting about proper procedure. Sherlock ignores him, and it brings you some small amount of comfort to realize that at least everyone is equally unworthy of his attention.

“Hi, I’m Molly Hooper,” you say, smiling at Lestrade. “Can I help you?”

He looks at you and smiles briefly. “Greg Lestrade. DI over at New Scotland Yard. Currently the keeper for the genius,” he adds belatedly, nodding at Sherlock.

You give him a knowing look and smirk at Sherlock. “Good luck with that.”

As soon as you can get away, you retreat into the side room and close the door, berating yourself for sounding like an idiot and trying in vain to catch your breath as you tap your left thumb to each of the fingers on your left hand, repeating the sequence three times until you feel like you can get enough air.

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The routine stays the same for almost a year. Sherlock ignores and belittles you, except in the area in which it would hurt most, and steals body parts and reorganizes the morgue enough that you think you might actually go insane if you have to fix it one more time. Lestrade shows up occasionally and speaks to you kindly. He doesn’t make you feel stupid, despite your fumbling and tripping over your words, and he only touches you once. You jump as though you’ve been shocked, and he doesn’t attempt to pat your shoulder again.

Then Sherlock drags John Watson into your little circle of people you might almost call friends. He is Sherlock’s exact opposite, short and sweet and polite. There’s something telling in the way Sherlock brightens around him, the way he’s slightly less of an arse than usual, even if you’re not sure what it is yet. It’s then, watching them stroll out of the morgue together, that you think you ought to give up wishing for something you can’t have while it’s still your choice.

You meet Jim because of Sherlock, ironically enough. The bloody genius confiscates your computer for an experiment, and when he returns it to you the password has been changed.

The man IT sends up is shy and fumbling. He stutters over his words and fixes your computer, and you find it surprisingly easy to make conversation with him. He’s new to London, and somehow you find yourself agreeing to go to coffee with him after your shift.

Jim is sweet. He doesn’t pry, he’s kind to Toby when she invites him over after the coffee, and he laughs at her jokes. She’s not the most awkward person in the room, for once, and that feels nice. The date ends with Jim brushing a quick kiss on your cheek and blushing.

“I….I’d like to do that again. You know, if you’d like to. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, of course, I don’t want this to be a pity thing…”

You take a deep breath, and brush your lips against his. It’s nice enough, you suppose, but his lips are dry and cool from the night air, and for a moment you are reminded unpleasantly of the time Sherlock convinced you to kiss a corpse for an experiment on DNA collection.

You swallow your doubts, pushing them forcibly past the lump in your throat, and nod. “I’d like that. Maybe next weekend?”

You cry yourself to sleep that night without knowing why.

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The relationship ends much in the way that it began, with Jim stuttering and blushing and apologising while you feel oddly detached. “Sorry, I just…I can’t,” you say with a tight little smile as you usher him out the door. You lock all three locks behind you and walk to the shower as if in a daze, turning the water as hot as it will go before doing your best to scrub his scent off of your skin. And if you stay in there longer than is strictly necessary, curled up into a little ball as water beats down on your scalp, well, no one has to know.

This, of course, is only the beginning.

It’s Lestrade who tells you the truth. He knocks on the door of the morgue not three days later and asks you to sit down as he outlines, in the simplest terms possible, that the man you have just broken up with is a violent psychopath with an unhealthy obsession with Sherlock Holmes. As he tells you the details of the case and what happened at the pool, you feel your throat begin to constrict and you slide sideways out of your chair, not caring who might see you.

“Molly?” You hear Lestrade say as if from far away. Everything is fuzzy, and you are past the point where there is anything you can do but let the attack happen, your blood filling with adrenaline as your heart threatens to remove itself from your chest by whatever means necessary.

You don’t know how much time passes before your brain begins to slow down again and you can feel your knees trembling against your chest. It takes you a moment to realize that the choked breaths echoing in your ear are your own, and another to get them under control.

“Sorry,” you whisper in the general direction of Lestrade. “I just…”

“Yeah,” Lestrade says heavily. He covers your hand tentatively with his own, and you crumple. You’re already as bad as you’re going to get today, and while normally this would trigger a panic attack and frantic thoughts about impropriety…well…

You wrap your arms around Lestrade and press your face into his shoulder, using the beat of his heart to attempt to regulate your own. After what might have been anywhere from one to fifteen minutes, you let him go.

“Um. Sorry, Lestrade. Again.” You know you’re blushing, despite all efforts not to.

“Don’t be. Are you going to be okay, Molly? We can put a watch on your house, or try to help move you, if you like.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Wasn’t ever me he wanted, right?”

“Well, if you change your mind, just say the word. And Molly? It’s Greg.” Lestrade gives you a tired smile before heading out the door, preparing to deal with the fallout of everything that’s happened.

You sleep on the floor of the morgue for the next two nights, and find it morbidly comforting to know that at least the cadavers don’t have an opinion on you, one way or another.

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Christmas comes about quietly, and you fret over every present you pick. In the end, you get Sherlock the bones of the wrist and fingers of a murderer that you worked on weeks before. It wasn’t strictly legal, but then, neither was most of what Sherlock did in the morgue. You get John a scarf, a nice green that you think will match Sherlock’s blue. You're not sure if John will like it, but Sherlock will. You cut off that train of thought before it can properly begin. For Greg, you end up deciding on a soft leather journal and a box of tea. You can’t help but feel that it’s all wrong, but then, it’s not as though you know him very well. Not nearly as well as you wish to, anyway, a traitorous voice whispers in the back of your head.

The Christmas party is a disaster. You had thought that if you didn’t have feelings for Sherlock anymore, then it wouldn’t matter if he hurt you. But a small part of you couldn’t help but feel angry. _He should know._ It was his job, after all. He should know that you wasted two feet of wrapping paper trying to get the creases exactly right. That the corners were perfect because they had to be and that the only reason Sherlock’s present was red and not green was because you had wrapped it last, after the green paper was all gone, and because the red had reminded you of blood.

You had thought Sherlock would appreciate it as well.

You split a taxi with Greg, and he chatters about football to fill the silence on the way home. He doesn’t seem to expect you to join in, doesn’t even seem to fully be paying attention to what he says, and you suspect that he’s still reeling from the deduction Sherlock had lobbed so casually at him.

He squeezes your hand and wishes you a Merry Christmas as you exit, and for the rest of the night you feel pleasantly warm.

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And then it all goes to hell very fast.

Moriarty goes on trial. You spend the day on the floor of your bathroom, nauseous and doing your best to stay sane by reciting primes.

He gets off. Sherlock gets the blame for everything that’s been happening, and he and John disappear.

It happens, as it always would, in the morgue. He sweeps in quietly, not unlike the first time you met him.

“"If I wasn't everything that you think I am—everything that I think I am,” he says, “would you still want to help me?"

You take a deep breath. “What do you need?”

“You.” And with that, you can feel the shape of the events that must unfold. They’re linear, perfect. One plus one is two. Two plus one is three. You know exactly what must come next, for Sherlock to do what he must do, and for the first time in your life, you are not the slightest bit afraid.

To the rest of the world, Sherlock Holmes died by throwing himself off a building.

To you, Sherlock Holmes died by colouring his hair in your sink and pressing a kiss to your cheek before leaving your home.

“Take care of John. Please,” he said to you as he lifted his backpack.

Perhaps before you would have made something of it, before, this strange possessiveness that he shows when it comes to his flatmate. But the ‘please’ breaks you, and it’s all you can do to nod as he walks out the door.

You don’t bother locking it behind him.

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Six months pass before you see Lestrade.

He comes into the morgue and you smile at him despite the twisting in your gut. “Hi, Greg. What can I help you with?”

He looks at you guiltily and shrugs slightly. “I needed some quiet, and I wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine,” you tell him with a more sincere smile. You gesture at the chair in the corner, and he sits and talks with you while you work. You hadn’t realised how much you missed it, missed having a live person to talk to every now and again, and when he stands to leave you squeeze his hand briefly in passing.

Greg begins to come by at least once a week, if not more. You talk about everything, except the one thing you must never tell him. He learns about your compulsions when you start reciting square roots out loud after a particularly stressful morning, and about your anxiety when you have to call the front desk to request a file and immediately burst into tears afterward. Slowly, he tells you about his divorce and his job, and you get used to his friendly touches whenever he passes by you. You even talk about John, and how he’s started seeing someone. Greg thinks it will be good for him. You can’t tell him why you disagree.

It is a Saturday the first time he asks you out. The date is nice, coffee and a walk through the park, and Greg takes you home afterward. It is not until you are standing on the doorstep that you feel that familiar prickle of fear course through you, and you kiss Greg briefly on the cheek before saying goodbye.

He doesn’t press the matter, and you cry yourself to sleep with all the lights on.

Right finger to left palm.

One, two, three steps.

Left finger to right palm.

Repeat.

Eventually, you break down and tell Greg. He is understanding, and if the muscles in his jaw tighten and his fists clench, well, there’s nothing either of you can do to change it now.

Another three months pass until it is a year to the day that Sherlock died to you. You take Greg to bed.

You whisper a confession in the middle of the night, fear clawing its way up your throat because you’re positive he’ll leave now that he knows. He doesn’t. Greg merely curls one arm around you tighter, pressing it flat against your stomach.

“I’m not angry. Not at you, anyway. You always were the clever one,” he whispers, even though he knows by now that his words won’t stop the attack. His other hand rests in your hair, and he softly begins to whisper in your ear as you cling to his voice like a lifeline.

“One. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Thirteen…”

**Author's Note:**

> Ended up writing this as catharsis for my own panic and anxiety disorders. While I do have OCD, it is very mild and manifests in a different form than Molly's, so I have drawn from a friend's experience. This work is not intended to offend anyone else who suffers from mental disorders of any kind.


End file.
